Close Call

Somehow, in the middle of my manic day with Team Mayhem, I managed to sneak in a ride on a Blackhawk helicopter. The 717th’s commanding officer, Capt. Greg Hirschey, had to deliver a shipment of robots to one of his bomb squads in the town of Mahmudiya, about twenty-five miles to the south. I wanted to see Iraq from the sky. Hirschey needed an extra set of hands. So I helped out with the delivery.

Johnnie Mason, who was waiting in Mahmudiya when we lug the robots off of the copter, was particularly glad to see us – and the machines – when we land. Four days earlier, he had come within inches of losing his life because he didn't have a robot handy.

The first bot, nicknamed “Layla,” was “flambéed” after it dropped some thermite grenades in a suspected car bomb, and couldn’t get its spindly arms out of the window. The second lost its video feed, before Mason could send it to look a row of human corpses, rotting by a canal in the 118 degree heat. So Mason had to see for himself to whether there really were wires and artillery shells stuffed underneath one of the bodies.

"Figures," Mason muttered. "I've had a bad feeling all day long that today was really gonna suck." It took him an hour to just to find the access road where the corpses were. Ordinarily, the bomb squads use GPS trackers, to plot out their routes – and to make sure they're not following the same path every time. But this road wasn't on any of the maps.

Mason -- a lanky, 31 year-old Texan with big brown eyes and a goofy smile -- was strapped into an 80-pound, sumo-esque Kevlar "bomb suit." He grabbed a long metal pole with a hook on one end. And then he began to march through the tall grass to the right of the bodies, looking for wires. Mason made a wide sweep – maybe 200 meters – to avoid potential landmines on the way. He found the detonation cord when he reached the far side of the bodies. It was coming from underneath the corpses, attached to a 122 mm shell. Mason fought back an urge to puke. “The dead bodies, they smelled like catfish bait.”

But there was no time to heave. Mason figured he only had a moment or two to act before a bomber detonated his device. So he ducked behind a three-foot berm, reached out with his pole, and pulled.

Mason was less than 20 feet away when the shells went off. But he still had time to crouch into a fetal position before the shock wave hit him. And to be terrified. "It was too fast for me to think, 'Oh God, I'm gonna die,'" Mason says. "It was just instant fear."

Dirt flew up. Shard of bomb zipped through the air. The shockwave knocked Mason over. But he was intact, somehow. “I stood up, and all this dust and dirt and rocks fall off of me. I looked like the Hulk, in that big green suit,” he smiled.

Mason’s partner, Pfc. Brian James, ran over. “Are you alright?” he yelled. “Where you at?”

“I’m in Iraq, Brooke!” Mason shouted back. That was his wife’s name.

Mason sat down for fifteen minutes, drank some water. And then he went right back to the bodies. Before the handmade bomb had gone off, he noticed a second shell, 20 meters away. So Mason took a couple pounds of C4 plastic explosive, and set the thing off. “I still had a job to do,” he told me, as he picked up the cordless phone than nearly killed him. He keeps it as a souvenir.

Inside the "Baghdad Bomb Squad"

After months of preparation, and three weeks in a warzone, my entire trip to Iraq has been boiled down to 29 hours. But that day-and-a-smidge shift with “Team Mayhem,” a U.S. Army bomb squad, winds up being pretty damn action-packed.

Booby traps, smoking mortars, rooftop gunfire, suspected truck bombs, roadside explosives, and an idiosyncratic little robot named “Rainman” all figure prominently in the story, which appears in this month’s Wired magazine. Mostly, though, the article is about the battle of wits that’s being fought between high-tech U.S. military squads and low-tech insurgent bombers. Improvised explosives have become the deadliest threat to soldiers and civilians alike in Iraq. So the winner of this fight largely determines the fate of the counterinsurgency.

But getting a clear picture of this tangle has been tough; military bomb squads, or "explosive ordnance disposal" units, are ordinarily shrouded in secrecy, operating in shadows. This is one of the first times they’ve allowed a reporter in for an extended stay.

So click here for a look inside “The Baghdad Bomb Squad.” Once you’re done, you can take a look at 140 pictures I shot during my time in Iraq. And here are some reports on American troops’ morale, and my online diaries from Iraq. Enjoy…

THERE'S MORE: Capt. Greg Hirschey, the commanding officer of the 717th Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Company (which inlcludes Team Mayhem), just dropped me a line. Two of his sergeants, he said, "were hit with an IED yesterday with injuries to their security element. I just walked into the shop from an incident and received word that our Air Force augmentation team was hit with an IED just minutes ago... It is hectic right now once again. Seems like it never stops. Here is a photo of my shot from this morn."

Captain America in the Forever War

American troops in Iraq are near-suicidal. Or maybe they couldn’t be happier. It all depends on the flavor of blog you read, I guess. But what I found in my time in Iraq didn’t cling to any neat political storyline.

Over three weeks in and around Baghdad this July, I spoke to dozens and dozens of soldiers about their views on the conflict. For the most part, morale among these infantrymen and engineers and bomb-disposers was high. Shockingly high, given the fact that they didn’t buy the Bush administration’s rationales for the war.

“Democracy? Here? Are you fucking kidding me?” one sergeant laughed, as we drove near the Abu Ghraib prison. This was from a guy from helped safeguard the January round of elections. He figures the place will collapse into civil war as soon as U.S. troops leave.

But he’s glad he’s in Iraq, regardless. Mostly, because of the insurgents.

The guerillas in Iraq have been brutal, killing way more innocent bystanders than American occupiers or Iraqi collaborators. While I was in Baghdad, a group of soldiers in a nearby neighborhood were handing out candy to bunch of kids. Until a suicide bomber stepped in, and killed 27.

“It boggles my mind, how someone can go into a crowd of kids, and kill them all. I’ll never understand it. But that’s why I’m here,” said Staff Sgt. Mark Palmer, with the 717th Ordnance Disposal Company, an Army bomb squad. “Yeah, it’s still fun to blow stuff up. But it’s not the core thing. Figuring out how this shit [the bomb] works. Stopping it from hurting people. That’s the main thing.”

U.S. troops are highly trained. So they’ll do what they’re ordered. But in order to feel good about their mission, they need a cause. They need a bad guy, a villain, so they can play Captain America. The insurgents have been only too happy to step collectively into the role of Dr. Doom.

The result is a cycle of attack and reprisal that has nothing to do with WMD or drafting constitutions – but can easily drag on for years. Most of the soldiers I spoke with didn’t expect the deadly feedback loop to stop any time this decade. “I’m staying [in the Army] until I retire, which is another ten years,” one non-commissioned officer told me. “So I figure I’ll be back here, what, another five or six times?”

Most of these GIs were ready to whoop ass, when they first get to Iraq. They’re part of America’s professional, increasingly-permanent military class. Which means they’ve been training for years to go to war – with precious few full-out battles to fight. “For a solider, this is like the Super Bowl,” Captain Greg Hirschey, the 717th’s commanding officer, said.

But the Super Bowl is only one day long. To keep going for years and years, they need a mission, a reason to stay and fight. Washington isn’t providing. The insurgents are.

And make no mistake, soldiers are staying. I’d say three in four of the GIs I spoke with were planning to reenlist. The new, fat bonuses are one reason, of course. But another is the sense that there are real-life psychopaths out there that need to be stopped. It may sound corny. It may sound dumb. But that’s what I saw.

THERE’S MORE: Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t throw in a few caveats here. These soldiers we all stationed at Camp Victory, the poshest military base I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the safer places would could be in a warzone. Which means better morale. Could soldiers and marines feel differently out in the sticks, where it’s MREs three times a day and mortars all night? You bet. Also, I was in Iraq in July. Since then, 233 American troops have died over there. That could have been a major morale-changer, too.

AND MORE: Chris is embedded with the 2-2 Batallion of the II Marine Expeditionary Force in the Anbar province. Which means you go read his blog, now.

AND MORE: Joe Katzman's response is really worth a read.

Iraqi Shabbat

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend Friday night services with a group of Jewish G.I.s serving in Baghdad. Here are the first few lines from my report for the Forward on what I found...

They are a minyan, just barely. Half of them come to pray with guns.

The rabbi, Mitchell Schranz, would rather his congregants leave their Berettas and their M-4 rifles at home than bring them to this nondescript alcove, not far from a former palace of Saddam Hussein. But this is Camp Victory, the American military's main headquarters in Iraq — and Jewish soldiers don't always have the option of welcoming Shabbat unarmed.

"We're in a wartime, combat situation," U.S. Navy Commander Schranz said in a recent interview. "You've got to be flexible."

Killing Time

For the first time since I landed in Iraq, I'm panicking. Not that a bomb has gone off. Or that an RPG has hit nearby. It's my flight out of here that's got my heart ready to jump out of my ribcage.

I'm sitting in a hangar-sized waiting room in the middle of the Baghdad airport's military wing. Defense Department contractors, most of them overweight by 75 pounds or more, waddle about the canvas-walled terminal, dripping sweat. Dozens of soldiers sit in rows of movie theater-style seats, reading paperbacks and watching "The Elephant Man" on a big-screen TV. Others catch naps on the floor, leaving their uniforms and their rucksacks covered with a talcum-like white dust. Many of them have been waiting around here for more than a day, killing time until their planes are ready to take off.

I may be joining them in the powder. Sandstorms regularly ground flights here. And after a perfectly clear morning, the air is beginning to grow hazy with dust. The people at the terminal are talking about "maintenance issues" which could ground my flight to Kuwait – or maybe re-route it to Mosul, 300 miles in the opposite direction. And that has me pacing around the terminal with worry.

Why I'm acting like this, I have no clue. In the last two weeks, bullets have zinged over my head. A mortar began smoking at my feet. And the patrol I was with was ambushed on at least two occasions. None of that really bothered me. But now, I might be missing a goddamn plane ride, and I'm freaking the fuck out. What the hell?

Maybe my reaction isn't so mysterious. After all, when it comes to travel, I'm the latest in a long line of nervous nellies. My grandfather, he'd show up to an airport three hours before takeoff. My dad leaves an hour to get to the train station, even if it's only twenty minutes away. I like to think of myself as not quite as twitchy as them. But check me out now, drumming my fingers against my thigh. Am I really all that different? On the other hand, I've never seen any member of my family in combat. There's no neurotic blueprint to follow.

Or maybe it's because I've done so much waiting around for this story already: waiting for my body armor and my shockproof laptop to show up; waiting to leave the country; waiting to get into Iraq from Kuwait, and into my unit once I was there; waiting for the insurgents to do something, so I could write it down; waiting for them to stop. And I know I've got more waiting ahead. It's going to take three days, at least, to get back to New York. God knows, I don't want it to take any longer.

Or maybe I'm so anxious because I finally can be. Because the real danger has past, and now I'm free to exhale. When I was a musician, I'd almost always come down with a nasty cold right when a tour was done – as if my antibodies were finally giving up, after a month of holding germs at bay. As if my body finally knew that I could afford to spend a day in bed.

Which gets me thinking about the soldiers I've just left behind. They've got five months, at least, until they have the luxury of worrying about a missed plane. And even when they do come back home, it won't be much of a reprieve. Most of them figure they'll be back in Iraq in another year. And while they're stateside, they'll be extremely busy. Before they shipped out to Iraq, these soldiers spent 11 of the prior 15 months on domestic missions; before that, they were on duty in the Balkans.

These guys are a small sliver of the half-million or so men and women who are rapidly becoming this country's permanent warrior class -- centurions for whom there's no break in the fighting, no rest from the alerts, no chance to get nervous before a flight. All of the burdens of war fall on these men and their families. The rest of us -- 95 percent plus of the country, as Uwe Reinhardt notes in today's Washington Post – get off basically scot-free. We don't even pay extra taxes to support them.

Not too long ago, we used to have "citizen-soldiers" in this country. That's feels almost antiquated these days. Today, our citizens and our soldiers have become increasingly separated into distinct camps. The former gets all of the benefits of the latter's sacrifice. And the segregation is only getting worse, as new recruits become harder to find, and our legionnaires get tax-free lump-sums worth a year's salary or more by re-enlisting while deployed.

When I get back to the States, I'll pick up with my reporting on the gadgets and mechanics of the military. But I'm also going to try a lot harder to be a voice for this marginalized segment of society that is being asked to do so much in our name.

I'll start as soon as I can. But right now, I have to go. My flight is getting ready to board.

THERE'S MORE: USA Today has a must-read story today on the "bidding war" between the government and private industry over our warrior class.

Detonation

The truck exploded only a couple of hours ago. But, already, the wreckage looks ancient, like a ship dredged to the surface after a century on the ocean floor. Everything inside the cab is shredded. The dashboard has been thrown loose, and singed black. The seats are atomized. The odometer sits on the ground, not far from where the driver’s door used to be.

The orange Mercedes was part of a long line of cement trucks, waiting to deliver their goods to Camp Victory when the base opened for commercial traffic at eight. Then, a pair of the trucks exploded -- a botched attempt, apparently, to detonate suicide bombs inside of the base. Two men are dead. One of the attackers has been captured.

Military investigators are still trying to piece together exactly what happened. The bombs might have been thrown into the trucks by a car passing by; the jury-rigged weapons might have already been in hand.

I try to pay attention to the conflicting theories, to the line of men waiting to be questioned. But I keep staring at the scraps of freshly-ended lives that are quickly turning into artifacts under the blazing Mesopotamian sun. The driver must have been wearing the black sandals which now lie in front of the truck. Maybe he had some pita with his breakfast; a crust now sits near the shoes. Before he died, he might have read from the crinkled, torn Koran resting a few feet away. Or he could have listened to a cassette; strands of audio tape are strewn all over the wreckage.

Back on the base, I wonder how much of this to put in public, to share with my family and my fiancée. I want to record what I see; I don’t want to worry the people I love.

It’s a dilemma soldiers here cope with every day. They crave their families’ support; they’re crippled by their concern. Most of the troops I’ve spoken to choose the keep their loved ones in the dark. “I tell ‘em all that CNN is full of shit and that nothing’s going on here,” one national guardsman says. “We don’t get shot at. We haven’t seen anyone who’s unfriendly. They think that I have a desk job, that I never go outside the wire” – Camp Victory’s concrete walls.

But letting CNN write your letters home can only fuel the worry. “Every time a bomb goes off in Baghdad, I get e-mails asking, ‘Are you alright? Are you alright?’” an officer here sighs.

Because the networks aren’t very good at conveying the subtle shades of danger in a place like this. Either they lead, big, with a new act of carnage – or they bury the news from here at the end of the broadcast. That leaves the impression that all of Iraq is in flames, all of the time. Which is just plain wrong.

Here around Camp Victory, for example, the last week has been a relatively quiet one. Iraqi army and police patrols have grown noticeably since I’ve been here. Smiles outnumber hard stares 100 to 1. And when there has been violence, it has been relatively small-scale – like the single RPG shot fired in my general direction the other night.

So I’m going to keep writing what I see, for the few days I have left here. Painting events in muted colors, instead of TV’s garish brights. And capturing my experience in Iraq, before it becomes twisted fragments on history’s road.

Bump in the Night

Years ago, I met Clive Barker, the horror film director, in a New York hotel room. He was in town to promote a video game he had helped edit. One of the first changes he made, Barker told me, was to change the monster at the end of the adventure. It was enormous, ugly – and not in the least bit frightening. Make something smaller, something hidden, he suggested. The scariest things are the ones we can’t see.

It’s a conversation I’ve been thinking about, ever since last night’s patrol. The unit I’m embedded with was called out – for the umpteenth time – to “Route Michigan,” a big, trash-packed road near the Baghdad Airport. The route’s commercial stretch, busy even in a sandstorm, was nearly empty. It was maybe eight-thirty, twilight time here in Iraq. A ribbon of bruised orange rung the sky. The moon had just risen; it was a slickly red, like blood gone bad. “This place is a whole lot creepier in the dark,” I whispered to a Lieutenant, as he peered through a night-vision scope.

Man-sized shadows crept in the background, past the scalloped balconies in the shops’ second stories. A three-legged dog scampered in front of the Humvees. I tried to stare into the dark, to see any potential attackers. If any were out there, I couldn’t see them. For one of the few times on this war zone trip, my heart started thumping, hard, against my chest.

“Hey!” the Lieutenant shouted, shining a green laser pointer at a group of men, walking into the road from an alleyway 50-75 yards away. They scattered.

Five minutes ticked by. Nothing happened. Then, without warning, a bright white flashed where the man had been. There was a cacophonous, almost electric, crack – the sound of a rocket-propelled grenade exploding. “Get cover!” the Lieutenant yelled.

Now, this is the point when I should have been the most scared – when my fears suddenly, deafeningly came true. But that’s not what happened at all. As I crouched behind a Humvee, all of the fright drained out of me. I could see what I was supposed to scare me. And it didn't any more.

Now, this is all easy to say, because the fighting ended after that single round. Who knows what would have happened in a real firefight. But yesterday, there were no more RPGs, or even a single shot fired on either side. Our unit retreated a bit; soldiers swept the area; the threat passed.

When we got back to the base, around 1:30 pm, we watched the last few minutes of “Starship Troopers.” And then I went to bed, sleeping with a baby's calm.

G.I. T.V.

I’m sitting in a room with a half-dozen soldiers. And we’re watching animated carrier pigeons on TV.

“I’ve got this amazing navigation system,” one of the birds says to the other. “I just can’t find Sgt. Kowalski.”

“No change of address form, hunh?” the second pigeon answers. Off-camera, an announcer reminds for G.I.s to notify the post office when they change bases. The soldiers in the room groan. “It’s shit like this that makes me embarrassed to be in the Army,” a sergeant to my left spits, as the television returns to its regular Fox News broadcast.

All of the major networks donate programming to the Defense Department, which re-broadcasts it to military outposts around the globe, commercial-free. But that doesn’t mean the shows run uninterrupted. Instead of slickly-produced come-ons for cars or energy drinks or Tom Cruise’s latest opus, troops are bombarded with amateurish, half-baked ads that sit in the space somewhere between public relations and public nagging. Cross-breed your local Chevy dealership’s TV spot with the company newsletter, and you have the commercials of the Armed Forces Network.

“Baby safe instruction manuals.” Websites that let you apply for jobs at the PX. The Air Force’s traveling, Las Vegas-style review. “The best softballers in Europe.” No item is too picayune or too inconsequential to be hyped on AFN. And at no point do the commercial-makers ever assume that their uniformed audience has any more than a few dozen points of IQ. “Diversification is a big word,” a talking chicken tells us.

But that doesn’t mean that AFN wants their Neanderthals to leave the armed services. Hell, no. Every branch of the military advertises on the network to get troops to re-enlist, to lure them from one service to the other, or to convince their children – presumably watching from military-provided houses – to sign on up.

It’s a tension that I’ve heard ever since I got to Baghdad. Officers keep telling me that the counterinsurgency here is a “thinking man’s war” that requires even the most junior personnel to make quick, smart decisions. And, they assure me, that America’s troops are well prepared for that mission. But, minutes later, those same officers will also tell me that “we’re not too smart” or that “I’m not the brightest guy,” or that “there’s a reason most of our soldiers didn’t go to college.”

So which is it? Has the Pentagon sent a bunch of warrior-geniuses to Iraq -- or a pack of grunts, dumb as rocks? Maybe it’s a self-selecting process, covering defense technology. But most of the troops I’ve met over the past four years have been pretty damn bright – even the ones (often, especially the ones) that never made it past the 11th grade.

AFN, on the other hand, seems to have come to entirely different conclusion. One with simple words, short sentences, and cartoons. Lots and lots of cartoons. “Don’t get wrapped up with these high interest credit cards,” an announcer says, while the television shows us a crudely-drawn mummy. “Quitting cold turkey can be tough,” coos another, as an animated man jumps off of a cliff, and splats on the ground. “Nicotine replacement products can soften your landing.”

Later, an airman shows off the skills he learned in survival school – by wearing green camouflage makeup in a snowstorm. A man dressed up like a human heart does jumping jacks and runs up stairs, to prove a point about exercise. And a doe-eyed young soldier in a gym keeps rocking his head back and forth, left-to-right, left-to-right. A buddy asks what he’s doing. “Training,” he replies. For an Army tennis championship, to be held in Germany soon. “I’m not training to compete. I’m training to watch.”

Black Hawk Up

This has been a wish-fulfillment year for me – riding on cop patrols, shooting white water rapids, proposing to my girl. Today, I checked another item off of the lifelong to-do list, getting in a helicopter for the first time. Of course, flying over Baghdad was never part of the fantasy.

Black Hawk helicopters run a regular route between the main American military bases around the greater Baghdad area. On a clear day, a pair of the copters comes here, to Camp Liberty, about every hour-and-a-half. But the days haven’t all been so clear, lately. So it took a full work week for the captain of the unit that I’m with to secure us spots on the copter down to Ad Mahmudiya, twenty minutes to the southeast.

I had heard helicopters flying off in the distance before. And I knew – from the movies, I guess – that, up close, they were beyond loud. I stuff foam plugs in my ears well before I can see the Black Hawks coming. All of the passengers do.

Maybe the ear protection makes a difference. But, as the copters descend tail first onto Liberty’s makeshift helipad, I can’t tell. A low-pitched, cyclical growl turns into a full-throated roar when Black Hawks touch the ground. It feels like I’m back in New York -- on the subway platform, with a half-dozen express trains rocketing by.

We crouch low and scurry towards the aircraft, the decibels mounting with every skittish step. Everything else is now inaudible, except for the whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp of air being sliced by helicopter blades.

We step up into the Black Hawk. One of the gunners shows me how to stick the lap belt and two shoulder harnesses into a single, circular lock. And then we take off, the copter shuddering as we gain elevation.

Baghdad is just as ugly from the sky as it is from the ground, with block after endless block of colorless apartment buildings and dilapidated factories. The roofs are covered with satellite dishes and trash.

But as the helicopters bank southward, beyond the urban sprawl, a dusty beauty emerges. From a few hundred yards up, we see neatly-groomed farms and patches of palm trees. This could be central California, easily.

The Black Hawk dips and sways. At one moment, we’re flying parallel to the ground. And then, the copter jerks to one side, rolling into a 45 degree angle. I grin. To me, this is fun.

Apparently, I shouldn’t have been smiling, the captain tells me after we land. Just about every time the Black Hawks fly, he says, insurgents take potshots at the copters with AK-47s. The chances of a serious hit are about one in a zillion. Nailing a Black Hawk moving at 150 miles per hour is tough, and a few bullets won’t bring one down.

But, just to be on the safe side, the pilots do pull a few of those crazy rolls. The gunners watch for trouble as they swing their 7.62 milimeter machine guns. And they fire off flares, the captain adds, to attract any heat-seeking missiles that might be headed skyward. I gulp.

Before making the return trip, we have a few hours to kill at the small American outpost at Ad Mahmudiya -- or “FOB Shithole,” as the soldiers here call it, using the acronym for “Forwarding Operating Base.” Life for the few hundred troops couldn’t be much different than the relative luxury and safety of the complex where I’m staying. Soldiers are packed into converted shipping containers and concrete bunkers. Piles of scrap metal and shot-up cars litter the base. The PX and the operations center recently burned to the ground. Helmets and body armor are required wearing at all times.

I sit behind one of the Black Hawk’s two gunners for the ride back. And this time, the noise is even worse, with a high-pitched whirr – from the rotor, I figure – joining the chomp of the blades and the roar of the wind passing over the the weapon. The gusts are so strong, it’s a struggle just to lift my arms to take a picture.

The captain wasn’t kidding. The copter does fire off rainbow-colored, almost iridescent, countermeasures a minute or two after we get into the air. But there aren’t any missiles to distract. The rolls are less intense. The dips are less severe. And we’re back at base just a short while later – safe, sound, and wish granted.

Dust in the Wind

I’ve been indoors for a few hours now. My eyes are still burning. And my throat is still scratched, red-raw. I’m picking and blowing chunks out of my nostrils that are brown and sticky, like the resin of hashish. But at least I’m starting to be able to breathe halfway-normal again.

For the last day-and-a-half, the air over Baghdad has grown more and more clogged with sand. Yesterday, it pushed my helicopter flight down to Ad Mahmudiya back in three hour blocks, until the trip was cancelled altogether. This morning, there wasn’t even a discussion about going airborne. Visibility has shrunk to 30 feet, maybe. The highway signs to Abu Ghraib are unreadable, until you’re right underneath. The blimps watching over the base have become invisible – if they’re even flying at all. The sun has vanished. And the wind has grown razor tips.

The guards here – contractors from Nepal, I’m guessing – wear surgical masks at their posts. Outside the gates, the locals wrap scarves around their heads, and go right on selling their tires and their watermelons and their marbled meat from ramshackle wooden stands.

Iraqi insurgents are almost certain at work, too. It’s a “perfect time for a bomb planting,” the captain of the unit I’m embedded with grumbles. “Perfect fucking cover.”

On “Route Michigan,” the American military’s name for a trash-heavy road near the Baghdad Airport, plastic chairs sway in the sandstorm. Humvees gather. Soldiers peer into the dust, looking for snipers. But if there are any shooters out there, they can’t be seen through the desert fog.

There is a small silver lining to the dust clouds, though. The temperature is a relatively temperate 113 degrees. Not bad, considering the previous afternoon peaked at 128. Yesterday, I had sweated through my t-shirt and camouflage in a few minutes, wetting the inside of my body armor. It took a good hour to achieve the same effect today. Thank heaven for small favors.

THERE’S MORE: So much for vegetarian, wi-fi paradise. Hours after I posted my note the other day about the comforts of “Camp Victory,” (be sure to read the comments) my situation turned upside-down. My unit is stationed on the far side of the sprawling enclave, near “Camp Liberty.” It is miles from Victory’s palace headquarters. And some of the joys of top brass life have yet to reach to the grunts stationed here – wireless Internet access, for one.

I do have a bed in a trailer now, which is mighty nice. But I lost the memo granting me access to the local mess hall. It’s not that big of a deal. My unit – on the secretive side, and continually on the go, even during meal times – gets food brought back to its station house. But it’s taken a few days for the supply sergeant, a soft-spoken Haitian, to get his head wrapped around the idea of a herbivore. “Vegetables aren’t food,” another sergeant here joked. “They’re what food eats.”

Things are getting themselves sorted out, however. The Captain pulled rank – loud and hard – on a poor sergeant who offered up a lame excuse for why I didn’t have a new chow pass. Within a few minutes, his boss was literally running to hand us one. And tonight, when I got back from Route Michigan, there was a plate of boiled broccoli and fried rice waiting for me. Freedom is on the march.

AND MORE: Chris has an incredible account of the day from the Green Zone.

Camp Normal

Who knew being a vegetarian in a war zone could be this easy? Not that I’m exactly in in the thick of battle, yet. Camp Victory, adjacent to the Baghdad Airport, is a sprawling military command center of 15,000 troops. And, despite the occasional helicopter grunting overhead, the conflict feels very far away. Yesterday, I was worried about facing bullets and bombs. Today, I’m wondering whether to have a slushie or a cookie for desert.

If you discount the dust and the suffocating heat, Victory could be any one of a hundred American military bases scattered around the world. Except this one is fancier. And there are more of the comforts of home.

The Camp’s chiefs are installed in smart cubicles on the top floors of Saddam’s sumptuous summer palace. Some of the soldiers ride around in bicycles, wearing Army-issue shorts and tees. Kevlar and helmets are not required.

Reporters are set up in air-conditioned tents, and can peck away at their laptops through the local wi-fi "Freedom Network." The mess hall is stocked with tangy kimchi and cook-to-order stir-fry, bean sprouts included. The PX is full of DVDs and X-Box games and Operation Iraw Freedom tchokes. The Starbucks knock-off is open 24/7, right next to the Pizza Hut and the Subway. The pool, for now, is closed.

The Army unit I’m supposed to join up with was expecting me tomorrow, not today. The action should come quick after that. So I took advantage of the pause. I napped in my deliciously-cool tent. I played war tourist as I gawked at the palace-turned-HQ. And I shared cigars with a battlefield surgeon from the Green Zone, watching Blackhawks silhouetted by the crescent moon. Not a bad first day at war.

THERE’S MORE: Yes, I did manage to get my bags back, in time to hitch a ride to Baghdad.

The Kiln of Kuwait

The first thing you notice about Kuwait – most of the time, the only thing you notice – is the heat. This is a kiln of a country. And it blasts a relentless, sand-dry wind that evaporates and withers everything inside. You squeeze your eyelids into slits, just to keep the balls underneath from losing their moisture, and turning into cracked marbles. Plans for walks or jogs quickly devolve into sluggish strolls. And with every breath, your throat feels more and more like a scroll of brittle parchment, unfolding.

I arrived in the country earlier today, on a nearly day-long flight from New York. And when I walked out of Kuwait International Airport, the billboard thermometer above the taxi stand read 39 degrees Celsius, or 102 Fahrenheit. This was at six o’clock in the morning.

After a mix-up with my bags – they’re still somewhere over Europe, apparently – a taxi took me to my hotel. It's an isolated, heavily-guarded Hilton resort, hugging the coast of the Persian Gulf. Oil tankers sit in the distance. Hundreds of beach-chairs and thatched umbrellas and neo-Arab tents line the beaches, which are kept immaculate by Indians and Thais in purple jumpsuits and bright blue overalls. Kayaks are stacked neatly against stucco “chalets.” But the fuss is mostly make-work. There are no footprints on the shore. And nobody’s using the boats. The heat forces almost everyone indoors. Outdoors entertainments for hundreds, maybe thousands, go untouched. It’s a Bellagio filled with a bed-and-breakfast-sized clientele. A ghost town.

The only exception is the pool, where about fifteen guests have gathered. Bikini-clad, modern women swim in make-up and designer do-rags. The religious ladies get wet, too -- in chadors and neon pink baseball hats, playing in the shallow end with their children. Burning Spear pumps from the bar’s sound system.

By now, it’s nearly six in the evening. The sun is sinking beneath the hotel’s mirrored walls. But whoever’s stoking Kuwait’s hundred-foot furnace hasn’t let up at all. If anything, it’s feels even hotter than it was at the airport this morning. To me, that's an awful omen. Because, very soon, I’m going to have to face this heat wrapped in Kevlar and ceramic plates, with bullets ringing in my ears and the fires from roadside bombs burning nearby. Tomorrow, I leave for Iraq.

Off to Iraq

I’ve spent a big chunk of the last four years writing about how technology is changing the way battles are fought. Now it’s time for me to witness those changes close-up – and see how war still remains brutally, awfully the same. I’m leaving for Iraq on Saturday morning, on assignment for Wired magazine.

For the moment, I can’t go into too many details about what I’ll be doing there. It’s just too tasty a story to let out of the oven before it’s baked. But here’s what I can say: I’ll be embedding with a high-tech Army unit – one that’s playing an absolutely central role in the counterinsurgency there. If these soldiers fail in their missions, the entire coalition operation could go up in smoke. If they succeed, lots and lots of American and Iraqi lives will be saved.

It's unclear how much blogging I'm going to be able to do while I'm over there. I'm certainly going to try to do as much as I can. But while I’m gone – which should be about three weeks – three supremely qualified guest-bloggers will be at the helm of Defense Tech HQ, each for a week apiece:

- Dan Dupont is the editor of the fascinating Inside Defense family of newsletters, and is a frequent contributor to Scientific American magazine.

- Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, who runs the always-excellent Arms Control Wonk blog, is a Research Fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. He last guest-blogged here in December.

- Dr. Jim Lewis has served as a political advisor to U.S. Southern Command, U.S. Central Command, and to the U.S. Central American Task Force. He now heads up the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

You can reach them at the regular address, defense-AT-defensetech-DOT-com. I’ll be based out of Camp Victory, near the Baghdad airport. So if you’re stationed there, gimme a shout. My usual e-mail home has been swamped by a spam-storm; try me instead at noah-DOT-shachtman-AT-gmail-DOT-com.